On the identical time, the wild buying and selling surrounding shares like

GameStop

and

AMC Leisure

confirmed indicators of abating. GameStop shares fluctuated and have been not too long ago up 15%, whereas AMC fell greater than 25%.

Buying and selling round these two shares had captured the eye of Wall Road and Primary Road alike, and their parabolic rise coincided with the sharpest inventory selloff in months on Wednesday. The stumble in shares follows a powerful begin to the 12 months that some buyers say had pushed share costs past ranges justified by company fundamentals.

“There may be some over-excitement out there,” mentioned

Olaf van den Heuvel,

chief funding officer for Aegon Asset Administration within the Netherlands, pointing to the surge in GameStop shares as one instance. “It was bubble territory.”

Earnings appeared to contribute to the rebound. Shares of

American Airways Group

jumped 26% after the airliner reported a narrower loss than what analysts had predicted. Different journey shares rallied, together with United Airways, up 7.3%, and Carnival, which added 7.2%.

Shares of

Apple,

in the meantime, fell practically 2% after the iPhone maker reported its most worthwhile three months on report however didn’t present particular income steering for the present quarter.

Tesla dropped 5.2% after the electric-vehicle maker—whose shares have soared in latest months—posted its first full-year revenue however missed Wall Road’s expectations.

Visa

and

Mondelez Worldwide

are scheduled to publish outcomes after the shut. Each have been not too long ago buying and selling increased.

“It’s nerve-racking,” mentioned

Remi Olu-Pitan,

a fund supervisor at Schroders, referring to the large strikes in shares fueled by day merchants swapping suggestions on-line.

“You will note extra violent pullbacks,” she mentioned, including that Europe’s gradual progress on vaccines and Covid-19 restrictions in main economies have been additionally weighing on shares.

Heavy retail buying and selling of shares and choices is rippling by way of broader markets, mentioned

Peter Garnry,

head of fairness technique at Saxo Financial institution. Hedge funds have moved to cowl bets that shares focused by particular person buyers on social media would fall. That has elevated volatility and prompted different funds to promote, hitting benchmark indexes, in line with Mr. Garnry.

Weekly information confirmed purposes for unemployment advantages, tracked as an indicator of the well being of the labor market, declined final week however remained elevated at 847,000. Separate figures confirmed gross-domestic product, a broad gauge of the worth of products and companies produced within the financial system, grew at a 4% annual charge within the closing quarter of 2020, barely slower than economists had anticipated.

This information got here after the Federal Reserve maintained its simple cash insurance policies Wednesday, saying that enterprise exercise has softened with the resurgence of Covid-19 circumstances.

In a single signal of rising danger aversion, the yield on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury notice dropped beneath 1% for the primary time since Jan. 6, earlier than climbing again to 1.008%, in line with

Tradeweb.

Bond yields fall as costs rise. Falling yields are sometimes an indicator that buyers see the financial outlook weakening.

Shares traded largely decrease abroad. The pan-continental Stoxx Europe 600 was largely flat in latest buying and selling. Hong Kong’s Dangle Seng dropped 2.6%, the Shanghai Composite Index fell 1.9% and Japan’s Nikkei 225 declined 1.5%. Container-shipping large Cosco Transport led losses in mainland China, sliding 10%.

—Michael Wursthorn and

Caitlin Ostroff

contributed to this text.

Write to Joe Wallace at Joe.Wallace@wsj.com and Chong Koh Ping at chong.kohping@wsj.com